Book Review: Europe
| Published date | 01 September 2008 |
| Date | 01 September 2008 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1478-9302.2008.00165_3.x |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
Most of the statistics in British Electoral Facts
1838–2006 are meant for psephologists and other
researchers who take an interest in the raw
numerical data produced by the polls.Yet Rallings
and Thrasher have produced a neat, compact
reference book which provides a wealth of infor-
mation about the changing British electorate,
and which is likely to remain the definitive guide
to British electoral history until a forthcoming
edition adds new data on elections yet to come.
Shannon Granville
(Independent Scholar)
New Labour and the Civil Service by David
Richards. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
2008. 272pp., £55.00, ISBN 0 333 71580 2
This text is the first comprehensive assessment of
the Labour government’s approach to the civil
service and is based on an original account of the
power relationship between the government,
Whitehall and the wider policy community.The
study considers three substantial themes to address
the core question of the book: the relationship
between change inWhitehall and the Westminster
model.
First, there is an in-depth evaluation of the
1997 transition from John Major to Tony Blair,
which was an important test of whether the
Westminster model would be sustained. Second,
the study evaluates Labour’s ‘approach to
reforming the broader policy-making arena and
the effect this has had on Whitehall’(p. 10).The
third theme concerns the internal impact of
Labour’s reforms on Whitehall, the strategy
ministers brought into government and how
this agenda altered core executive relations. This
chapter considers ‘whether or not the Civil
Service has been politicised under Blair and the
impact which key change, such as the much
greater use of special advisors, has made on the
core executive’ (p. 10).
The study is underpinned by the requirement
to explain why the Westminster model was ‘the
aggregate concept explaining New Labour’s rela-
tions with and approach toWhitehall since 1997’
(p.10). The book recognises how the Westminster
model has ‘shaped the strategic choices made by
the Party’s leaders’ (p.10) and concludes by claim-
ing that assertions about the end of the traditional
Westminster model and the emergence of a
differentiated policy should be regarded with
caution. In contrast, the author argues that these
reforms represent an attempt to reconstitute the
Westminster model and sustain the asymmetric
position enjoyed by the core executive in the
policy-making process.
This analysis represents a major contribution to
the literature;it combines theoretical and concep-
tual rigour with an extensive commitment to
interview-based research.As well as supplying an
impressive narrative of the Labour administra-
tion’s approach toWhitehall, Richards generates a
robust challenge to the Bevir/Rhodes approach
that focuses on the allegedly ‘malign and distort-
ing influence’ (p. x) that the Westminster model
has had on accounts of British politics, while still
acknowledging intellectual debts to the likes of
Rod Rhodes. This is a first-class book that
should be of interest to anyone with an academic
interest in governance and or British politics. It
should have a place in good academic libraries for
decades to come.
Michael Cole
(University of Liverpool)
We welcome short reviews of books in all
areas of politics and international relations.
For guidelines on submitting reviews, and to
see an up-to-date listing of books avail-
able for review, please visit http://www.
politicalstudiesreview.org/.
Europe
Security in the New Europe by Andrew
Cottey. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
258pp., £19.99, ISBN 978 1 4039 8649 8
Andrew Cottey has written a wide-ranging
survey of security in the ‘new’Europe. His over-
arching argument is that a security community
has developed within Western and Central
Europe. The frontiers of that community are
386 EUROPE
© 2008The Authors. Journal compilation © 2008 Political StudiesAssociation
Political Studies Review: 2008, 6(3)
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